ECB’s Wunsch Term at Head of National Bank of Belgium Renewed

10 January 2024

By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Pierre Wunsch has been reappointed to a second five-year term at the head of the National Bank of Belgium.

According to an announcement issued Wednesday by the Belgian central bank, the reappointment of Wunsch, whose first mandate expired on 31 December, must still be confirmed by royal decree. This is likely to be a mere formality, however.

‘In my second term, I look forward to continuing to implement, together with the Bank’s Board of Directors and staff, the strategy we mapped out several years ago, to ensure that the NBB is a modern central bank at the service of society and at the heart of the Eurosystem’, Wunsch was quoted as saying in the announcement.

‘I am thinking, for example, of our new workplace and corporate culture, the Bank’s real estate project, the further optimisation of our internal processes and data collection and analysis, our fresh approach to communication with various stakeholders, our diversity and inclusion efforts, the new emphasis in areas such as financial supervision and research, and our achievements in many other fields’, he said. 

Wunsch, unlike all his recent predecessors, has turned out to be a relatively hawkish policymaker, and ranks alongside Austria’s Robert Holzmann and Germany’s Joachim Nagel on the Econostream hawk-dove scale.